When Speed Wasn't Enough
by mountedcombat
Summary: My name is Tarq. I've always been the fastest. I always will be. But I will never forget the day that I wasn't fast enough. rated T for safety.


**Not only my first fanfic ever, but the first story I have willingly written ever, so please don't hate. You know the drill, I do not own summoner's war.**

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My name is Tarq. I've always been the fastest. I always will be. But I will never forget the day that I wasn't fast enough.

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It was supposed to be a routine mission. Not a normal mission by any means, but a routine one nonetheless. Go to a volcano that had recently become active, find the monster responsible, and kill it.

The moment we arrived, we recognized the work of another summoner. And not the usual kind either, but the psychopathic "it's-a-good-idea-to-tear-a-hole-in-reality" kind. Like the brave fools we were, we decided to stop the idiot before he could destroy the world. Without waiting for backup. We fought our way into the volcano, soon coming across the body of the loon that did this. Unfortunately, he was dead because he had succeded, then promptly been killed by the creatures flooding through the portal. We eventually reached the portal itself, at which point two things happened: first, our backup started to arrive, with the first being two portal experts, specializing in closing them. The other event that happened at that exact same moment? A dragon flew through the portal.

The fight didn't go well.

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My team and I, we're not exactly human. There's four of us, and all of us are water attributes. That means we have a natural connection with water, just as the other four attributes have natural connections with their respective elements. The result? Fire attributes can't hold a candle to us (oh shut up, it was a good pun and you know it), while wind attributes just blow us away (I said shut up).

As for the actual team members, the leader is an inugami (think giant wolf) named Icaru. The only thing thicker than his skin is his skull, but I have to admit he's a good motivator. We all seem to move faster when he's around. Next up is a martial cat (cat features, but human shape) named Mina. Honestly, she's the only one to ever eat my dust. Everyone else was always so far behind that they never even saw the cloud. Third is a woman named Lapis. I know exactly zip about her. She just showed up one day and hasn't left. She's always been nice, though.

Finally, myself. I'm a hellhound. Think doberman with a cluster of spikes between the shoulders, and fangs the size of your arm.

We never lost a single fight. We all knew the cost. If our info for a mission was bad, we would abort. But we got cocky. A string of easy missions had our guard down and our senses dulled. We weren't ready for life-or-death.

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Looking back, I realize that I was angry, yes, but I was also smug, and overconfident. The dragon had killed Mina. It had killed Icaru. I was hurt bad. And Lapis was on her last legs. But so was the dragon. I was staring it down. I knew that I could kill it before it could kill me. I could see that it knew. I thought that it would throw everything it had at me, go down in a blaze of glory. I wasn't ready for what I saw enter its eyes. Spite. The dragon couldn't kill me, so it would make me suffer. I could only watch in horror as it turned its head and breathed a tidal wave of fire towards Lapis. I looked at her. She looked at me. I could tell that she had been thinking the same things as me, just as we were thinking the same thing now.

Even I wasn't that fast. Even I couldn't run past the dragon, pick her up, and carry her out of harm's way before the flames reached her. I wasn't fast enough, and she would die because of it.

The flames engulfed her, and she was gone.

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They tell me I did my best. They tell me I'm a hero. But does a hero watch his team die? I tried to die after that. I soloed dungeon after dungeon after dungeon. I slew dragons. I slaughtered giants. They weren't fast enough. The same speed that wouldn't let me save my team, my family, now refuses to let me join them. This went on for months.

Then she stopped by. Ellia. The nicest girl on the planet, and cute too. One day I was at the island, trying to figure out what to kill next, and she came to my room. I just waited for her to leave, until I felt something that I had never felt before.

A soft hand stroking my back. She was petting me. Nobody had ever petted me before, and for good reason. Those spikes are pretty intimidating. But she didn't care. She looked past the spikes and the fangs, the snarling and howling, and saw what I really was.

In pain.

Hurting and afraid.

Hurting because I had let those I cared about down.

Afraid that it would happen again.

She saw this, but she didn't say anything.

She didn't say that I tried my best.

She didn't say that I succeeded in the end.

She didn't even say that I was moping like an idiot and needed to get my act together.

She just sat there and stroked my back.

After a while, she got up and left, but I got her message. I'm different now. I have a new team, a new family. And I think it's about time I returned her favor and sent a message to the luckiest, thickest-skulled guy on the planet, to tell him that what he has with Ellia is more special than he ever imagined.


End file.
